House Democrats ordered the systematic falsification of records showing how they spend their taxpayer-provided office budgets, according to lawyers for two former House information technology (IT) aides.

It’s a remarkable accusation that pits sitting lawmakers against the former aides, Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and his wife Hina Alvi. Imran was arrested in July while trying to board a flight to Pakistan, and then indicted on four counts of bank fraud involving moving money to that country. Imran and Hina, who was also indicted, face a court date Friday.

One of Imran’s lawyers, Aaron Page, acknowledged the invoicing discrepancy Aug. 21, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation, “This is just how things have been done for forever. This is what experienced members of Congress expect: to expedite things, they adjust the pricing.”

If members or senior staff instructed IT aides to misrepresent how budgets were spent, that could potentially explain why officials have not charged the Awans with crimes related to procurement, even a full year after House authorities gathered documentation showing invoices that claimed expensive technological items cost $499 instead of their true price: potentially an open-and-shut violation.

Garden-variety Democratic graft is probably the least worrisome lawbreaking the Awan ring could have been up to…

now believe that the left will re-elect Trump. The ruction over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem illustrates the point.

The left has talked itself into believing that Trump’s alleged appeals to white racism were what put him over the top.

More astute psephologists have pointed out that the actual difference was made by people in industrial states who previously had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but switched to Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Hard to attribute those decisions to white racism.

Nevertheless, the left now interprets all of Trump’s actions through the prism of perceived appeals to white racism. If Trump were to tweet, “It’s a lovely day in Washington,” the left would denounce it as a dog whistle to white supremacists.

Which brings us to the NFL ruction. Players began kneeling during the national anthem reportedly to protest what they regard as racial injustice in the United States. Trump denounced them in Trumpian fashion.

According to the left, since the players were protesting racial injustice, Trump was endorsing racial injustice by criticizing them. There goes that dog whistle!

o most Americans, that’s nuts.

I’m not much of a flag waver. And I’ve never really understood why sporting events begin with the playing of the national anthem. Doesn’t seem a particularly apposite occasion for a display of patriotic fidelity.

But it is part of American tradition. And traditions matter.

You don’t have to be a racist to find galling the spectacle of pampered athletics, making millions of dollars playing a game, hosted in taxpayer-subsidized stadiums, benefiting from an antitrust exemption, ostentatiously exempting themselves from the traditional display of fidelity to our country.

The argument by some that the protest isn’t really about the flag and national anthem rings hollow. If you do it during the national anthem, it is about the flag and the national anthem.

Snip.

Generally speaking, white Middle Americans aren’t racists. They don’t long for a return to Jim Crow. They’re just sick of having identity and grievance politics thrown in their faces all the time.

If the left continues to tell Middle Americans they are racists, Trump will be re-elected.

“Senior law enforcement officials from the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras announced here today criminal charges against more than 3,800 MS-13 and 18th Street gang members in the United States and Central America in a coordinated law enforcement action known as Operation Regional Shield.”

The forces that brought Trump to power are alien to the experience of the men and women who populate newsrooms, his supporters unlike their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, his agenda anathema to the catechism of social liberalism, his career and business empire complex and murky and sensational. Little surprise that journalists reacted to his election with a combination of panic, fear, disgust, fascination, exhilaration, and the self-affirming belief that they remain the last line of defense against an emerging American autocracy. Who has time for dispassionate analysis, for methodical research and reporting, when the president’s very being is an assault on one’s conception of self, when nothing less than the future of the country is at stake? Especially when the depletion of veteran editors, the relative youth and inexperience of political and congressional reporters, and the proliferation of social media, with its hot takes and quips, its groupthink and instant gratification, makes the transition from inquiry to indignation all too easy.

AUSTIN — President Trump on Thursday will nominate two conservatives from Texas with compelling personal stories to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a senior administrative official. Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett was cited by Trump as a potential U.S. Supreme court pick during his presidential campaign. Dallas appellate lawyer James Ho is a former Texas solicitor general who has argued cases before state and federal courts.

For over a decade on the Texas Supreme Court, Don Willett has proven himself to be a jurist of the highest order. His service on the court was simply one more step in a career of public service, from the Texas Governor Office, to the White House, to the Department of Justice, to the Texas Attorney General’s office. Every step along the way, Justice Willett has stood out as man of intellect and principle, and I am excited to see what he will accomplish on the Fifth Circuit.

Jim Ho has proven throughout his accomplished career that he is a passionate defender of the Constitution and the rule of law. Jim has served with distinction in all three branches of government, including as a law clerk to the great Justice Clarence Thomas on the United States Supreme Court, an official at the Department of Justice, and a chief counsel here in the United States Senate. Jim also succeeded me as Solicitor General of Texas, where he argued some of this country’s toughest cases before its highest courts. I am confident that he will be a stellar jurist and an intellectual force on the court.

There’s been a lot of criticism of John Cornyn in Tea Party circles over his failure to back Ted Cruz in procedural votes on the ObamaCare defunding fight. Given that, the muttering over someone primarying Cornyn have grown much louder.

Can anyone take Cornyn? It’s something of a tall order. He had some $6 million on hand as of the July reporting period, and any potential candidate will have a much latter start than Ted Cruz had when he beat David Dewhurst.

I queried a few people more tied-in than I, and three names of possible Cornyn challengers came up:

U.S. Congressman Louis Gohmert was the most popular choice. Gohmert is a solid conservative, and Mark Levin has even put up a Draft Congressman Gohmert for U.S. Senate page on Facebook. The drawback is that Gohmert isn’t wealthy enough to self-fund, and his East Texas district puts him far away from the Houston and Metroplex fundraising pools that would be necessary to fund a statewide campaign.

U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul was a very close second. McCaul is widely considered to be “conservative enough” (and has an ACU rating of 91%) and with a personal fortune estimated to be around $300 million (his wife is the daughter of the founder of Clear Channel), he could clearly self-fund. McCaul was considering a Senate run in 2012, but ultimately opted against it.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willet has also been mentioned as a possible candidate, and he’s well-respected among conservatives. But stepping from the Texas Supreme Court to the U.S. Senate is a tall order (Cornyn did it via a stint as Texas Attorney General), and Willet has joked about not being rich, so self-funding is probably out for him as well.

(Unmentioned by anyone, but someone who’s family connections would bring instant media coverage: George P. Bush. But name recognition and family connections only take you so far. Bush would go from an overwhelming favorite for Land Commissioner to a distinct underdog in a Senate race, plus there’s no guarantee he would be any more conservative than Cornyn. And Tea Party opinion of the Bush Dynasty is not exactly one of, shall we say, unrestrained affection.)

It’s going to be a tall order to take out a sitting U.S. Senator, barring scandal or even more deviation from conservative principles. But of those mentioned, McCaul probably has the best shot to beat Cornyn.